Profile: George Kasp: 40 Years Behind the Wheel (for Chicago Dispatcher)

   

   Every night in the summer of 1973, 18-year-old George Kasp would leave his job in a cup factory with a high-pitched ringing in his ears. 

   “I said, ‘this noise is affecting me,’” said Kasp. “‘There’s no way I’m working in a factory.’” After noticing a newspaper ad seeking cab drivers 18 years and older, Kasp drove to a Yellow Cab garage, was fingerprinted at the police station, and received his temporary chauffeur’s license--all in the same day.

Essay: The Self in Philosophy and Religion

To explore the nature of the self, it is crucial to define what we refer to when we speak of the self. In philosopher David Lund’s chapter on the self in Making Sense of It All, he explains that the self is not one’s name, qualities, body, or brain. Rather, the self is what a human being refers to when they use the word “I”; the self, then, according to Lund, is the subject of consciousness and experience—or nothing at all.

Community Profile: Radio Arte

If Pilsen’s youth are eggs waiting to hatch, Radio Arte is their incubator. According to Dulce Mora, executive producer of radio programs First Voice and Primera Voz, the station is a hub where students come first to be on the air, and end up leaving with a range of new skills and a wealth of new ideas.

Analysis: Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

Every full-grown cliché began as an embryo of sincerity. Through repetition and misuse, the sacred truth is lost in a sea of banality. It takes a critic of extraordinary insight to part these seas of irrelevance and extract the microscopic morsel of meaning tucked away inside. Anders, the book critic and main character in Tobais Wolff’s short story Bullet in the Brain, is not such a critic—at least not any longer.

Restaurant Profile: Cafe Jumping Bean

The corner of 18^th, Blue Island and Loomis is to Pilsen what the “six corners” are to Wicker Park—its heart. Just west of the intersection, across from Pilsen Vintage and Thrift, lies Café Jumping Bean.

The small café carries a big reputation. Residents of Pilsen are sure to see a familiar face or two among the crowd, and a crowd it is: the roughly two dozen seats in Jumping Bean are almost always occupied, so don’t be surprised if you have to wait a few.